The God Delusion
by Richard Dawkins
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard DawkinsEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-16
ISBN: 0618918248
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of The God Delusion
Book Review: The God Delusion
Summary: 1 Stars
I wonder who Dawkins imagines he will persuade with this book. It is full of fluff; it is breezy and glib; what little reasoning there is facile; and it meanders at times almost as badly as an essay by Montaigne. Those already in the atheist camp or those setup nearby at the agnostic site do not need persuading, and they (we) cannot, in my opinion, use this book very honestly to persuade others. Dawkins is far from a philosopher (he lacks nuance) and he's far from understanding the viewpoint of the religious believer. He seems to imagine that if he mocks religion enough and repeatedly points out how all the really smart people are not religious, that this will somehow work to his advantage in arguing his case. How so? I had expected this book to be vivid with rational argument, devastating and precise. But it's not. It's just a rambling, long-winded, tiresome polemic.
As a scientist, Dawkins is, of course, fully alert to the misuse and misjudgment of science, and when he stands on scientific ground against religious arguments and complaints, he is authoritative and aware of the details he omits in his account. In a popularization such as this, he can more or less coast along (I'm switching metaphors), skimming over the depth, pointing out what is more easily understood, showing the creationist, for example, how his argument fails, simply by a few casual references to scientific principles or fact. He doesn't have to go deep, but we know he can if he chooses. We know he could overwhelm us with detail and complex reasoning. So we give him a pass when he doesn't, and if we don't know any better, we assume the rest of the book has the same implicit intellectual competence and depth beneath its slick, glinting surface.
But any such hidden depth would leave its trace in what we see on the surface, within the configuration of what is shown, what is put in and what is left out; and that trace isn't there. Parts of this book are laughably shallow. He can't even discuss his own theory of memes without sounding inane. The book is as intellectually frivolous as a creationist tract against science. It is in fact, a correlative antithetical text, albeit in bloated form. There is so much philosophical naivete and dimwitted assertion and fallacious argumentation in it, the book could pass at times as the work of a misguided fanatic.
It's as if Dawkins hasn't given his case much thought; as if the surface breeze and the chatty meandering was where he found the most pleasure, not in the composition of a robust, tough-minded, analytical, meticulous, careful work of lasting value. If nobody knew who Dawkins was, if he had no reputation as a scientist or successful author, this book would go nowhere. It would have either died in the publisher's office or died on the bookshelves. At bottom, this book is an appeal to authority: that of Dawkins himself. How else to explain all the sloppy thinking that passes for argument in this book?
What is especially missing from Dawkins' polemic is any recognition that the notion of *explanation* underlies this debate, and that until this notion is clarified and defended, the very ambition and objective of science is not going to be understood by outsiders. Dawkins thinks it self-evident that religious explanations are not really explanations; but, of course, the religious think otherwise, and he never offers any enlightenment to them on why they are wrong. (See my final remarks, section C, for more on explanation as Dawkins see it.)
I agree with him that reason, hard thinking, and science in all its varieties of subject matter have led, and are leading still, to real explanations, and that positing God or pointing to religion and the experience of the religious is not going to answer the type of questions that critical thinkers are asking. Religious questions have to end in theology, and theology at its foundation is always working with suppositions which the received data of the religion has given without explanation. So for religion, explanation ends at revelation.
On the other hand, Scholasticism, for example, wasn't gibberish. It arose from hard thinking, proceeding from nonreligious beliefs, seemingly incontrovertible at the time, placed in forced, logical combination with unquestioned, "revealed givens", all ranked together as foundational truths (axioms, almost), and from those accepted fundamentals attempting to develop a reasoned, logically coherent and complete structure expressing the meaningful implications inherent within the vast synthesis of those various undisputed beliefs.
The infamous query of angels on the head of a pin wasn't nonsense, given the assumptions of both nonmaterial, spiritual beings and a nonspiritual, material world. How much space do such beings take up when interacting with the material world, as it was given by revelation they could? Any work of theology, modern or otherwise, is doing the same. The difference is in what is assumed as given (both the revealed and the nonreligious beliefs) and relevant to the fully elaborated theology. This is similar to what you see in the differences among geometries. If you start with different givens, you end up with different systems. The degree of shared assumptions influences the degree of similarity among the systems.
There are nonreligious beliefs which comprise the very core from which we understand the world: to deny them is to deny understanding itself. (The notion of explanation arises here.) Prior to the rise of science, "revealed givens" and nonreligious beliefs seemed compatible and allowed theological structures with little internal strain. (Since "revealed givens" can also begin as religious explanations, to call them "revealed" is misleading. But once accepted, they are held as if revealed and are unquestioned.) As modern science increases its influence on common, nonreligious belief, modern theologies struggle to combine religious "revealed givens" with these seemingly incontrovertible nonreligious beliefs arising from science. The forced, logical combination of the "given truths" of these two increasingly disparate belief collections threatens credulity of the proposed synthesis. Theology is threatened. Science, not seeking to combine the two, is not.
Dawkins claims to be making a case for atheism and against the truth-claims of religions. The final chapters take what could be called a reductio ad absurdum approach and focus on what Dawkins sees (these are not his words) as the moral perversity of religion; although, typically, he doesn't spell it out that clearly. Some future author, no doubt, will offer an immense compendium of such evidence. The moral atrocites could speak for themselves. What Dawkins doesn't fully understand (he almost does, but the organization of the book would be different if he fully did) is that, from the viewpoint of the religionist, he is using the moral system of "secular humanism" to argue against the morality of religion, and secular humanism pulls no weight with the religionist.
The religionist doesn't see humanism as legitimate: it is seen as a moral appendage to godless reason, its principles and regulations applied without credible secular justification. This is why religionists see atheism as morally dangerous. Religionists see morality as transcendentally justified by their god's existence, and imprinted upon humanity by that god; and they see the humanist's claim to moral sensibilities, not as proof that morality has no need of religion, but as unmistakable evidence of their god's existence and of that god-given conscience imprinted in all of us, yet corrupted in all of us by sin. Without the guidance of religion and a religious attitude, that corruption is unchecked. It is only the presence of the religionist, in constant battle against the godless of the world, that keeps humanity from collapsing into moral chaos and ruin. If atheism wins, humanity is lost.
Dawkins never argues persuasively for humanism. His bile, clothed in the guise of moral outrage, against religious parents involving their own children in the practice of their religion borders on a disturbing authoritarianism. His bigotry against religionists is staggering. And he wonders why they see him as an enemy. This book is only going to push religionists deeper into their convictions that atheists are cold-blooded, arrogant, overbearing, presumptuous, rude, autocratic louts. This book is seriously flawed as a so-called demonstration of a reasoned stance against religion. Dawkins, of course, thinks he stands manifestly on the highest of high moral ground. He is as maliciously conceited as a religious tyrant. His pomposity astounds.
For all his talk of science, Dawkins never tries to make a case for reason as the final authority against all comers. He doesn't mention the dilemma that if you begin by denying the final authority of reason, as religionists do, no authoritative, reasoned case can be made for it; and if you begin by presuming the final authority of reason and use reason as the final authority to prove its authority, you have argued in a circle. (Of course arguing in a circle is only unacceptable if you want to be reasonable.) He doesn't appear to understand the extreme difficulty involved in making a case against religion that a religionist will see as germane. Dawkins' book will be seen by religionists as a pretentious atheistic assault that completely mischaracterizes religion and is wholly beside the point in its moral complaints. As for the authority of reason: they distrust it. False reasoning, masquerading as true, is too often used in attempts to beguile the religionist away from religion. The masquerade is not always easy to spot, so it's best to distrust arguments that appear to support the atheist's cause. Reason is seen as a treacherous authority, its power misused in the service of deceit. The only authority that never deceives is God.
The tension that the science of evolution causes within the religionist arises from their difference in understanding the origin of humankind. It is not the changes within a species that provoke the religionist against evolution. It is the idea that species are not fixed, and that humankind as a species arose out of an entirely non-human kind. For the religionist, humankind came into being complete; it did not ascend through gradual, nor punctuated, biological changes from non-humanity to humanity. Because evolution differs here, the religionist spurns the rest. Dawkins does not speak to this concern. His discussions on evolution are of evolutionary affects within species. A religionist may be able to accept the idea of changes within a species and yet not accept the idea that species themselves come into being through change. How could Dawkins not understand this?
While reading the book, it often occurred to me that Dawkins wrote this using the wrong genre as a model. He wrote it as if it were popular science, but that's not really what the subject demands, given his purpose. In the genre of popular science, an author reports on what is believed by scientific authorities (perhaps including himself) as a result of scientific investigations and informed debate; it is not a genre in which an author needs to present a sustained argument to justify his position on some topic. When writing popular science, Dawkins can get away with relaxed, glossy, meandering prose, because in popular science, the real proofs lie outside the book, in the scientific journals and the evidence in the lab. The problem Dawkins ran into with this book is that he doesn't seem to realize the subject demands an entirely different genre, and thus a far different approach to the conclusions it claims to present. In this book he should be *making his case*, not waving his hands, casting moral aspersions, going off on political tangents, and cracking jokes.
::: Final Remarks :::
::: A :::
The book is divisible into two parts:
Chps 1-4 against theism
Chps 5-10 against religion
::: B :::
Dawkins' knockdown punch to dismiss creationists is straightforward and doesn't rely on science, it relies on the notion of probability. It can be stated succinctly:
[1] The improbability of God's existence is a greater improbability than any improbability the existence of God might explain. (pp. 146, 172)
This is not a new idea. Here's another version, with the same thrust, but less scientific sounding:
[2] Using God to explain a mystery is to explain a mystery by a greater mystery.
That doesn't have exactly the same meaning, because by implication it refers to explanation and understanding rather than probability. But the complaint behind [1] is that an explanation provides understanding, and that God's existence is postulated as an explanation for the existence of something that already has a probability of existing that is more probable than the existence of God whose existence is postulated to supply the explanation. Postulating God's existence can't function as an explanation because the explanation's sole purpose is to provide an understanding of how something, the existence of which seems improbable, can in fact exist. But God's existence seems even more improbable. We haven't gained understanding. We have only swapped difficulties and increased the complexity of our problem.
In postulating God's existence as an explanation, the improbability of the thing existing becomes now at least equal to the improbability of God's existence and perhaps even greater: because now the situation is that before we acquire an explanation of the existence of the thing that God's existence was postulated to explain, we also need to explain God's existence, which has a greater improbability, and we also need to take into account whatever level of improbability there is of the existence of God resulting in the existence of the thing which seems to us so improbably existing.
Here is another version:
[3] The unintelligibility of God is a greater unintelligibility than any unintelligibility the existence of God might explain.
This looks to be similar in meaning to [2] but the mystery to be explained in [2] I interpreted as existence. But it could be interpreted in relation to intelligibility, in which case it refers to degrees of intelligibility.
Statement [3] is not about explaining existence but about comprehending a thing, having explanations that provide an understanding of it. Here the focus is on the difficulty of understanding God in the way we might understand weather, or genetics, or our next door neighbor. This statement claims that God's existence can't assist us in understanding such things because, since God is fundamentally less intelligible than anything else we might want to understand, we can't acquire an understanding of God that, given his existence, would allow us to acquire an understanding of anything else. The concern is not with understanding why or how something exists, given God's existence, but with using God's existence and our understanding of God to understand something that is less difficult to understand than it is to understand God. Aside from this, how would understanding God help us understand weather, or genetics, or our next door neighbor?
This leads to:
[4] Understanding God is not a means to understanding anything else.
[5] Science has no need of God.
Backtracking, we have similar to [3], which spoke of intelligibility, the statement:
[3'] The complexity of God is a greater complexity than any complexity the existence of God might explain. (p. 183-4)
Just as in the case of the other versions, Dawkins doesn't elaborate, he simply asserts. It's not clear how he means complexity to be understood. I'll leave the analysis to others.
::: C :::
During a discussion on why there is religion at all, Dawkins gives a weak nod on page 196 to the concept of explanation, using the terms 'proximate' and 'ultimate'. He never refers this back to the difference between religious explanations and scientific explanations, and this justifies my complaint in my fifth paragraph. He also doesn't mention that the meanings he refers to for these terms 'ultimate' and 'proximate' coincide with Aristotle's *efficient cause* and *final cause*. As the Oxford Companion to Philosophy (p. 262) describes the difference: "[T]he efficient cause is what produces a thing; and the final cause is the purpose for which something is produced." Surprisingly, Dawkin's refers to the Oxford Companion earlier on page 135 of his book and quotes from its article on the problem of evil from its page 255, a mere seven pages away from the article on explanation, to which he never refers.
What Dawkins is concerned with is the final cause, which he calls an ultimate explanation, of religion. He states [i] a principle, [ii] an assertion, and [iii] a theory-statement:
[i] "Universal features of a species demand a Darwinian explanation." (p. 194)
[ii] "Religion is a large phenomenon and it needs a large theory to explain it." (p. 196)
[iii] "The general theory of religion as an accidental by-product -- a misfiring of something useful -- is the one I wish to advocate." (p. 218)
If every Darwinian explanation is at bottom simply that the thing to be explained contributed to survival under natural selection, then one could wonder if that is any more enlightening or useful an "explanation" than that this thing exists to show the glory of God. In other words: how explanatory are teleological explanations?
Strangely, Dawkins doesn't believe that the human need to have explanations, to seek understanding, the very human need which drives science itself, is that "something useful" which misfires to produce religion. (p. 196) Consider Kant's remarks on metaphysics in his first Critique. For how Dawkins uses the concept of explanation in his theory of the purpose of religion, see his chapter five. See also several articles in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, such as those on causality, final causes, teleological explanation, explanation, philosophical problems of biology, biological naturalism, evolution, emergent properties, supervenience, and religious experience.
In 1781, Immanuel Kant wrote:
"Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason.
"Reason falls into this perplexity through no fault of its own. It begins from principles whose use is unavoidable in the course of experience and at the same time sufficiently warranted by it. With these principles it rises (as its nature also requires) ever higher, to more remote conditions. But since it becomes aware in this way that its business must always remain incomplete because the questions never cease, reason sees itself necessitated to take refuge in principles that overstep all possible use in experience, and yet seem so unsuspicious that even ordinary common sense agrees with them. But it thereby falls into obscurity and contradictions, from which it can indeed surmise that it must somewhere be proceeding on the ground of hidden errors; but it cannot discover them, for the principles on which it is proceeding, since they surpass the bounds of all experience, no longer recognize any touchstone of experience. The battlefield of these endless controversies is called metaphysics."
From "Critique of Pure Reason" [1781/1787], Preface to first edition: first and second paragraphs; translation by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood; Cambridge, 1998.
Summary of The God Delusion
A preeminent scientist -- and the world's most prominent atheist -- asserts the irrationality of belief in God and the grievous harm religion has inflicted on society, from the Crusades to 9/11.
With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.
With rigor and wit, Dawkins examines God in all his forms, from the sex-obsessed tyrant of the Old Testament to the more benign (but still illogical) Celestial Watchmaker favored by some Enlightenment thinkers. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry, and abuses children, buttressing his points with historical and contemporary evidence. The God Delusion makes a compelling case that belief in God is not just wrong but potentially deadly. It also offers exhilarating insight into the advantages of atheism to the individual and society, not the least of which is a clearer, truer appreciation of the universe's wonders than any faith could ever muster.
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